Translating Dogen demands a philosophy of translation. Many of those translating Dogen are not professional translators, which perhaps is why we so often fail to see coherent philosophies being applied.

The simplistic choice is between “literal” and “paraphrased” translations. These styles have names: formal and dynamic equivalence, or “form equivalence” and “functional equivalence”. Sometimes the terms “word for word” and “thought for thought” are seen as well.

The debate between the two schools is heated and often uninformed. The literalists accuse the paraphrasers of inserting their own opinions into the translation. The paraphrasers respond that the literalists create wooden translations that no one wants to or can read.

There are problems with both sides of course. No translation can be completely literal, since it must use the vocabulary and syntax of the target language. And if the objective of the paraphrasers is to “create the same effect in the mind of the reader of the translation as the original did in the mind of its,” clearly this is impossible given that the readers exist in different cultural and historical contexts.

Of course, which style to use depends on the goals of the translation and the target audience. A wider, more general audience would call for a more dynamic style, a narrower, more expert audience a more formal one. When the source and target languages are distant linguistically, a more dynamic style may be the only choice.

Dynamic equivalence was developed by the linguist Eugene Nida for Bible translation. He insisted that only this approach could create an approachable, meaningful Bible for the masses. Bible translations are clearly a useful analogy for translating Dogen. An interesting approach developed for the God’s Word translation is called closest natural equivalence translation.

Closest natural equivalence claims to achieve the following:

• provide readers with a meaning equivalent to the source language in the target language
• express that meaning naturally in a way that a native English speaker would have spoken or written
• express the meaning in a way that is as close as possible to the way the source language expressed the meaning

CNE asserts that an awkward translation by definition is not faithful to the original, while at the same time natural-sounding language in and of itself never suffices to make a translation good.

The obvious objection is that it may not be possible to convey meaning accurately in natural sounding language. I would assert, however, that it is simply a matter of time and effort on the part of the translator. It should not be out of the question to spend an hour, or even a day, on a single sentence. Naturally, this reduces translator throughput dramatically. It is striking, however, how in many cases, once the effort is made, the resulting natural English undeniably conveys the meaning of the original in a way much more compact and compelling that a mechanical translation might.

The web page quoted above ends with a caveat:

Translation can never be completely objective. Even when operating under the assumptions of closest natural equivalence, translators cannot produce a perfect translation. Translators use cautious judgment and maintain a keen awareness of all the factors needed for a full understanding of the source text. Among other things, translators need to understand the original language’s grammar and syntax, appreciate and understand literary devices used by the original authors, understand what kind of audience the original author had in mind when writing, and understand the modern target audience and its language. Because these factors call for balance and judgment, every translation (even those produced using closest natural equivalence) can be improved.

This entry was posted on Thursday, January 12th, 2006 at 20:28 and is filed under dogen. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.